Cheap Mod: DIY AUX Input in a 2005-2008 Factory Head Unit

Maybe I am thinking of when my iphone is turned down. But on the freeway I have it at 30 at least.

There was some discussion on this a few post/pages back. I recommended a noise filter you could install. Another thing you could do is replace your aux wire with a shielded one. A shielded wire is what the factory uses on the 09+ head units with aux inputs. Not sure the best place to get some though. You just have to ground the shield or else it is pointless.

 

My iPod volume is maxes out, and I keep the stereo volume around 40-50. This is with the windows down running down the hwy. In town stereos at 30-40.



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- Please pardon any spelling mistakes or non-sensical BS. This message is sponsored by my iPod touch.

 

Perhaps I'm getting old. But if that's the case, you'd think that I'd need to turn it up to compensate for the hearing loss...

 

Awesome thread and great job...thanks for all the in depth details on how to pull this off.

 

Awesome mod. Did this yesterday and everything went pretty well. I lost my right speaker for a bit but it was because of my solder. Everything works now with my iphone, but I can not get it to work with my sat radio. I don't think it has a strong enough signal. Anyone have any thoughts about this?

Cheers

 

Finished this mod today. I did not want to upgrade to a new head unit (and attract "unwanted" attention) just to listen to my ipod. My first attempt at grounding resulted in no sound. The second has a tiny bit of static. Since I am primarily using this to listen to Stern I still encounter less static from the speakers than I hear from my girl when I listen to him. Thanks again for a great mod.

 

Here's a cheap way to turn this mod into a handsfree audio solution:

http://www.htcdepot.com/seidio-headphone-mic-adapter-35mm-to-35mm/11A75A2929A.htm

 

That would be kind of cool if you had an iphone or something. I wonder how well the mic would work in the cab?

This would be a cheap way to pipe your phone calls through your speakers for sure though.

 

I'm going to be doing this mod the weekend after this and I'll report back on the results of using it. Also for the grounding and feedback noise I'd recommend wrapping the left and right channel wires around a little donut magnet. If you take apart any good quality FM transmitter you will note that they all wrap the audio wires in a magnet to prevent interference from feeding back.

 

Very cool! I am very interested and definitely sort of intimidated by any electrical stuff.
thanks for the great writeup! i would like to do this... after practicing soldering on something not valuable!!!

 

You could also use some shielded wire with a bare wire ground. This is what the OEM input uses.

 

Thanks for posting this mod. I completed it over the week and I'm extremely happy. No more crappy fm signal interface. I have the single CD player and used the post from sandman614 as a reference. I ran three wires and soldered my ground to the actual ground on the same circuit board as my left/right connections. I used the ground post pictured in the upper right of sandman's wiring pic (looks like a screw with solder on top).

I don't have any bleed through, no static, and my sound levels are great. I am using it with my iphone and love the fact that I can stream Pandora everywhere I go!

Now it's time to pull the stereo out of my wife's Sequoia to see if I can eliminate the need for the crappy cassette tape interface. It's a 2003 with the tape and 6 disc CD player (JBL). I'm hoping I can figure it out.

Chris

 

Awesome keep us updated on the Sequoia. Welcome to the forum

 

I did this mod today, all in all took about 2 hours, and everything went silky smooth. Awesome write up, can't thank you enough. I mounted in the little change-holder thing under the steering wheel. I also grounded on the mounting bracket and have no sound leaking through in between songs.

 

Am I the first to have a failure at this?

Did the mod. The CD player just makes CD changing noise and never plays. Took it out a second time and made sure the solder didn't short across anything. Now it is just showing ERROR 3.


FML

 

This might sound stupid but you might try disconnecting your negative terminal on the battery wait two or three minutes then connect it back again and see if that restarts your head unit. Do you have the JBL audio?

 

I did this today in my '05, single-disc non-JBL unit. Went smoothly, as I have some pretty decent soldering experience (and some major OCD-style preparation and research tendencies.)

Can't say enough good about this. My solution to running the cable was to run the cable through a hole I made in my dashboard. This runs up to my phone in the dashboard holder, and now my calls, music, and Netflix/Hulu all run through the system. Awesome.

This thread should be a sticky - no question. Thanks for posting this!

 

X2 Sticky

 

awesome mod love that shit......

 

Now that this thread has been out for a while I am beginning to wish I made it a poll just so we could know statistically who had success and who didn't. I think it would be nice if most mod write ups came with a poll or some kind of rating system just because 7 pages of mixed reviews can be a lot to read through.

Overall though, I would say this thread has received a majority of positive responses. Minus BarefootBandit of course. I am still a little bit confused as to what happen with his error 3 code. I am not even sure what error 3 is but I know other people have got that code and they never open their head unit.